European leaders told to keep aid for poor people, not hosting refugees

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Helen Clark, the former New Zealand prime minister who now heads the UN Development Programme (UNDP), said such concerns were entirely justified, adding that those working to alleviate poverty were already struggling because of static levels of ODA and the increasing financial demands of humanitarian emergencies such as the Syrian crisis.

“If it was accompanied by growing ODA, it might not be noticed so much,” she said.

“But we really are at a bit of a plateau on ODA and the amount that is available for plain, ordinary development is less, because of all these other pressures on peacekeeping budgets, on the amount that can be counted for refugee resettlement in the OECD countries – and just the sheer need to meet people’s needs for humanitarian catastrophes. It is problematic.”

“Money is very much flowing to the most fragile contexts – a share of that also comes to the UNDP because we are very active in the middle of crises; as in the Syrian one or others,” she said.

“But it is frustrating our ability … to continue the level of support we’ve traditionally given to other countries who aren’t in conflict or disaster. That’s an issue for us.”

But despite the OECD’s decision and the competing demands of major crises – from Syria and Iraq to Yemen and South Sudan – Clark said she had already noticed the beginnings of a “sea change” in the way the donor community was looking at the relationship between development and humanitarian response.

“The truth is that the humanitarian system cannot cope with the burden it now has and that is ensuring that the main donors are looking at more sustainable approaches,” she said.

Clark said there was a growing trend towards essential, sustainable approaches such as planning for, and trying to mitigate, the effects of natural disasters, building more peaceful and inclusive societies and doing more to ensure that displaced people get the help they need to help themselves.

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“That sort of theme of shrinking the need, being on the front foot with prevention and ensuring that development isn’t something that stays in the background while immediate needs are met – because that does not work in a protracted crisis at all – and also working on whatever can be done on the prevention side with conflict and on building social cohesion and political dialogue; these issues are now very much at the forefront of the international debate,” she added.

“It is bringing the development side very much into the prevention of and response to crises.”

Clark also said social and economic development had a key role to play in tackling the refugee crisis.

“These are issues of development at home,” said Clark. “The economy is very, very slow there at the moment because it had the artificial boost from a big troop presence: many, many foreign troops create a whole infrastructure which is a bubble effect. But the bubble effect is gone.

“If we look at the Afghanistan context with the major Brussels conference coming up this year on development support, I would be surprised if it doesn’t also start to go down this track of, ‘How do we build the resilience of people to cope? How do we lock in and try to safeguard gains? How do we support people through a very difficult patch?’”

“The speeches made by the leaders in London were about building the resilience of people; it was very much around, ‘How do we support people having livelihoods, jobs, opportunities, schooling for the children, access to basic services?’ – even in the middle of profound crises,” she said.

“I think it’s actually come quite a long way and the challenge now will be to apply this more broadly.”